Introduction

Germany is key US ally and a cornerstone of the NATO alliance. However, domestic politics in the U.S. have complicated US-German relations in recent years. Former President Trump was highly unpopular in Germany, whose leaders and public viewed him as strong deviation from US leadership of the liberal international system since the end of World War II. For his part, Trump made Germany one of his favorite targets, frequently and openly criticizing it for low military spending and its energy reliance on Russia, among other points of contention. Using data from Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ 2022 Survey of Public Opinion on US Foreign Policy, I aimed to explore the degree to which Americans’ view of Germany had become politicized by the Trump era. The politicization of the U.S.-German relationship could have adverse impacts on bilateral cooperation and undermine the unity of the NATO alliance.

I hypothesized that conservative political ideology would be negatively associated with feelings towards Germany on a scale of 0 to 100, reasoning that more conservative respondents would be more attuned to Trump’s grievances towards the country.

Methods and Data

The data is from the 2022 Chicago Council on Global Affairs Survey of Public Opinion on US Foreign Policy. The survey includes responses from 3,253 adults from a representative sample of households.

The survey asked participants to rate their feelings towards a selection of countries, with 100 meaning “very warm” and 0 meaning “very cold.”

Across all respondents, the mean feeling for Germany was 66.12.

For my analysis, I selected and two key variables:

• Germany: Feelings towards Germany, ranging from very negative (0) to very positive (100)

• Ideology: Political ideology, ranging from Extremely Liberal (1) to Extremely Conservative (7).

I also recoded four additional variables as controls:

• NATO: Favor maintaining/increasing the US commitment to NATO (0), and favor decreasing or withdrawing US commitment to NATO (1)

• PartyID: Identifies as a Republican (1), Democrat (2), Independent (3), Other (4)

• Christian: Does not identify with a major Christian denomination (0), identifies with a major Christian denomination (1)

• Trump: Voted for another candidate for not at all in 2020 (0), voted for Trump in 2020 (1)

Results

I ran a multiple regression analysis using a model with Germany as the dependent variable and Ideology, NATO, Trump, PartyID, and Christian as independent variables. See table below for results:

• There are significant, negative relationships between ideology and feelings towards Germany. On average, a one point increase in ideology score—a shift to the right—reduced respondent feelings towards Germany by 2.36 points.

• There was also a significant, negative relationship between identification with Democrats or Other political parties and feelings towards Germany. On average, a identification with the Democrats or Other corresponded to a 6.9 point and 13.6 point decrease, respectively, controlling for other variables.

• Finally, there was a significant, negative relationship between wanting to reduce or withdraw the US NATO commitment and feelings towards Germany, corresponding to a 12.2 point decrease on average, controlling for other variables.

The plots below show differences in mean feelings for Germany by respondent subgroup for the statistically-significant variables.

Conclusion

Based on the results, the initial hypothesis that conservative political identification is negatively associated with feelings towards Germany (on a 0 to 100 scale) appears to be viable. Other identifications and beliefs are also negatively associated with feelings towards Germany. In particular, an identifying with a political party other than Democrats or Republicans (but not as an Independent) and wanting the US to reduce or withdraw its commitment to NATO are negatively associated with feelings towards Germany. Finally, there is smaller, negative association between identification with the Democrats and feelings for Germany.